Caller Line Identification or, simply, CLID announcement is a telephony feature that provides a called party with information about a calling party associated with a given incoming call to enable the called party to decide how to dispose of the given incoming call (such as, for example, answer the given incoming call, ignore the given incoming call, etc). Generally speaking, two flavours of the CLID announcement features are known in the art. Within a first CLID announcement feature, the CLID comprises a telephone number (or another identifier) associated with the called party. Within a second CLID announcement feature, commonly referred to as Enhanced CLID, the Enhanced CLID comprises the telephone number, as well as a billing (or subscribing) name. An indication of the billing name can be transmitted as part of a signalling message or can be obtained from a Line Information Data Base (LIDB) based on the telephone number which is transmitted as part of the signalling message. By ascertaining the telephone number and/or the name associated with the calling party, the called party may decide how she or he would like to handle the given incoming call.
However, the ability of the Enhanced CLID announcement solutions to provide additional information (i.e. the name of the calling party) increases the risk that misleading information is transmitted to the called party. For example, a particular call may be originated from an originating communication device which can be used by more than one person. If the person originating the particular call is not the same as the person subscribing to telephony service at the originating communication device, the called party may be misinformed as to who the true originator of the particular call is.
Therefore, the prior art solutions appear to lack means for identifying the name of the actual caller instead of the name of the subscriber. Such a function would be of benefit to both the calling party and the called party, as the called party will be in a better position to ascertain the true identity of the calling party and the calling party will more likely to be able to complete the call.